The Eric Metaxas Show - Robert Reilly

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

Historian Robert Reilly, in his new, well-researched book, “America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding,” presents his case for what made this a great nation of “ordered liberty.”   

Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, Albin. Hey, Eric. Christmas vacation, but we kind of had to pop on here because we got a couple things to say. But both of us are officially on vacation. I'm not going to pretend. I could be unconscious right now, but I had to get up to do this. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I should change my glasses, so it looks different in every opening that we do on Christmas. Yeah, we can fool them. We can fool them. Okay. So right now, we want to talk about the fact that we're, We're on vacation. But I just want to say, folks, we have stuff going on every day this week.

So just because Albin and I are on vacation, we don't want to tell you that we don't have original programming. Robert Riley will be my guest. We have, Albin, who else do we have? Michael Pack. I'm putting on a different shirt. So it looks like it's a different opening. I know. I love the fact that we're fooling people.

Oh, that's fooled all right. We've got, but anyway, we've got a lot of programming this week, but we don't want to forget to say, still, this is the last week, folks. This is the last week to get 30% off at nutrometics.com. You need melatonin. You need zinc. You need vitamin C. You need vitamin D.

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He doesn't know what I do professionally. I just asked him because he's a, you know, kind of an alternative medicine doctor. He uses all this stuff. I said, have you heard of nutrametics.com? Yeah, but I don't know what you do professionally, so I'm not so I'm not so. He said, oh, that's a great company.

He's not where I am. politically, theologically, he's just a good doctor here in New York City. I mentioned Nutrametics.com. He goes, oh, that's a great company.

And I said, use the code Eric. But seriously, they're a great company, but they also give 50% of their profits to missions, organizations.

Folks, come on, this is amazing. Nutrametics.com, M-E-D-I-X, neutrametics. com, 30% off until the end of this year, until the end of this week.

That's it. All right? You've been warned. Secondly, we have, have the campaign with CSI to free slaves. This week, this is it. This is it.

You need to go to Metaxistalk.com. Year-end giving, folks. Year-end giving. It doesn't get better than this. Suzanne and I gave them a gift recently. I have to tell you the idea that every $250 you gives them enables them to free a slave in Africa. We've talked about this in the past weeks.

it's amazing that this is true and you get to participate and we want everyone to participate who can participate go to metaxisotocot.com, click on the banner. This is just a great organization. I don't know what to say. Yeah. It's so beautiful that they're doing this. And by the way, Anne and I also gave to CSI generously because it is a great organization. Yeah.

We're not just telling you to give. We are ourselves giving. Yeah. And by the way, there's a phone number. it's 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. All right. So we hope that you'll give generously.

I'll say this because it's true. One of the things that I say that I can do to help an organization like this is I will offer myself for the evening to have dinner with anybody that can give a gift of $10,000, even if you get a group of people together. You know, maybe there's five couples. They each want to give $2,000, and we can get together and all have dinner someplace, whether here in New York City or in a state where you don't have to wear masks while you eat. But, you know, really, I love to do that. I love to meet the people who care about the things that we do. So if anybody out there wants to get together $10,000, give it a CSI before the end of this week, folks.

You've got to do it. You've got to go to metaxis.com. I'm sorry, not Ericmetaxis.com. You got to go to metaxistalkstalk.com. That's the radio website. Metaxistock.com, click on the banner. If you give $10,000 before the end of the year, obviously it's tax deductible.

And obviously, if you do the math, it helps to free 40 people who are currently enslaved. Folks, it's unthinkable. Every time I think about it, I just get so upset. This is so important. We can do tremendous, unmitigated good. God's glory by freeing people. 250 frees a slave.

For a thousand you can free four slaves. You also get autographed copies of Eric's new book, his atheism dead and also the complete collection of hamster homes from Simon and Chuston. Complete collection. That's unheard of. All right. So we want to encourage you, anybody who gives anything, it doesn't matter what you give.

You want to give $10, $50, $20, it doesn't matter. Whatever you give to CSI, go to metaxistock.com, and click on the banner. Whatever you give, we will enter you in our drawing, our end of the year, three grand prizes. We have a drawing, and we will send you tons of sign books, all kinds of fun stuff, just to make it fun, so that whatever you give, you're entered in the drawing. I also want to say we have one Make America Great Again hat left. Oh boy. This is, this hat was given to me, I'm not kidding, by Donald Trump, this hat. It's the last one.

He also gave me this pen. It's a special Donald Trump pen. He signed stuff. He signed the other hats with this. I'm going to, if anybody can give $2,500, I will sign this hat to you or to anyone you like with this hand, with Donald Trump's pen, with the hat that Trump gave to me. If anybody wants to give $2,500 and help free. you know, 10 human beings.

It's just, it's, it's, it's extraordinary. So I want to say that. Albin, real quick. Yes. We also want to remind people, you can get most of my books at my store.com. Use the code Eric. And I, I hesitate because it gets us into this big conversation. But there are people that haven't seen.

They don't know about the Salem News Channel. This is now a TV program and will become a late night TV program. I don't want to tip it off, but it's in the works. Salem Newschannel.com. You can see this program as a TV program, just as you can see it at Mike Lindel's Frankspeech.com. But when you go to Salem Newschannel.com, Salem Newschannel.com, you can see it see the Christmas special. You're wondering, where was that? How can I see it? Salem Newschannel.com. It's there. We encourage you to see it. We've edited out.

We bleeped out all the cussing. We pixelated all of the nudity. It's all pixelated so the kids can say, why is that pixelated? You can say, get out of the room. It's a fun family Christmas special, as they used to do back in olden days of your. Yeah. So. I wish we would have done outtakes because you've fallen off the top of the double-decker boss and me catching you. Oh, man. I know that was, man, it's crazy that that, that even though it didn't happen in my mind, it happened because you just put the picture in my mind.

But it is so crazy. We just want to encourage you to check it out. If you don't enjoy it, something's very wrong with you. And I say that in love. I'm confronting you like Nathan, the prophet. You are the man. You're messed up. If you don't enjoy it, something's drunk.

See, you need to get help. I think you need a lot of soaking prayer if you didn't enjoy it because you have religious spirit that needs cast. You're the lost sheep. You know what I mean? Something like that. Something like that. So we sound like we had too much eggnog and yet we're utterly sober. Folks, we just wanted to come out of our vacation, out of hiding.

To let you know we're still alive, very much alive. And we want to encourage you to do the things we've been mentioning because they go away. This is the last week. So 30% off nutrometics.com use the code Eric. My store.com, my pillow.com, use the code Eric. And of course, don't forget, folks, CSI. This is literally the last week of the campaign to free slaves. It's the Christmas season.

Please take advantage of this. It's just a glorious thing. God bless you. Merry Christmas. Bye. try to be funny. They're just not funny, which is a problem. I think I have the answer for you. If you like business news and current events with the side of actual comedy, you want to listen to, I can't say this is a straight face. It's called IP Frequently, the host Sir David and Brad,

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Hey there, folks. You know the name John. Smirak, you know that he's my guest on this program every week. He's a super genius. He's the world's oldest boy genius. And when John Smirak talks, smart people listen. John Smirak, he's the gold standard, has said to me, Eric, you've got to have Robert Riley on the program.

Because of that, we had Robert Riley on the program. And because of that, it is my delight to again have Robert Riley on the program. program, Robert Riley. Welcome. Eric, thank you so much. It's a delight to be back with you. Well, it's a delight to know you're out there, and it's a delight, frankly, to know that you have a new book out. It's called America on trial, a defense of the founding. How insane that we live in a time when the founding needs a defense, but it does. You're the man for the job. And by the way, if you've impressed John Zmirak, I think it's game over. Just ask the Lord to take you up, because you can't, you can't, there's nothing greater that you can do this side of heaven than impress John Smirak.

But you, Robert Riley, have written many books. The new book, American Trial, Defense of the Founding is published by Ignatius, which seems to publish most of the books I like. And the forward is by the, oh, my goodness, Larry Arne, who's the president of Hillsdale College, doesn't really get better than that. tell us in effect what is your defense of of the founding of America because we are living in a bizarre time where many people out of sheer ignorance to misunderstand the founding so what is your tack well first of all i want to say eric that i certainly share your high opinion of john smirak who is a dear friend and who was with me through the writing of this book as i would send him various chapters and hear his excellent comments and so forth. As you know, the founding is taking fire 360 from every direction, from certain conservative Christians who say it was a creature of radical enlightenment individualism. What conservative Christians, just so I know who's messed up, who is making that case? Because it's, I know they're wrong. They're at least mostly mistaken. But who is making that case?

Well, they're very good guys generally, but the ones I take on in the book, using their arguments as sort of the model of the attack, is Patrick Deneen and Notre Dame, and Michael Hanby at the John Paul II Center here in Washington. As I say, they're both give tremendously powerful diagnoses of what's wrong with the modern project. their problem is that they unfold the American founding in it and say that it's kind of a prime example of what's wrong with modernity. Now, the other angle of attack, which everyone is so familiar with, is the slavery issue, which is why I'm so glad Ignatius Press agreed to bring out an expanded edition, which is now out, which contains a new chapter was slavery the founding's fault. In that, I address in detail the 1619 project and what an extraordinary calumny on the American founding and the American founders it is. Just for using the word calumny, you're going to get invited back on this program. There's like a duck is supposed to come down and we'll give you $50. Seriously.

Can I say, in a way, I'm just quoting Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous. freed slaves, who was one of the greatest defenders of the American founding and Constitution, who said it was a calumny to think otherwise. Sorry to interrupt. Well, no, my goodness. Look, the idea that we're living at a time where these basics need bringing out that there are so many people that have been fooled by just preposterous a historical pseudo-information, the case needs to be made. There are many people that don't have any understanding of history, and therefore you can tell them anything. You can tell them that, yeah, slavery was invented by some white people 400 years ago in America. If you have any

sense of history, you understand that there is slavery today, blacks and slaving blacks in the Sudan. There has been slavery since the dawn of the dawn. There has been slavery since the dawn of humanity. And the idea that people would somehow say it's a white thing or it's an American thing is crazy. And yes, you're right. It is people like Frederick Douglass, to whom we look for clarification on this. So I know, I'm glad that you have written this expanded edition of America on trial with clarity on the ridiculousness of the 1619 project. One thing, Eric, I might say that reinforces to the point. you just made that slavery was an institution from time immemorial.

Is one thing the 1619 project neglects to notice, as they're saying, the slavery was introduced in 1619 when black slaves were brought by Dutch traders to Virginia, is that slavery was already widespread in the area of the American colonies practiced by the Native Americans who enslaved each other. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? But again, this is, you know, because we're both Christians, we understand that mankind is fallen. And apart from the God of Scripture, what we do is scandalous, is inhuman. So yes, slavery has existed always. It's a horror, and we are right to be horrified by it. But if anything, it has been serious Christians that have labored against us. the slave trade. I wrote a book about William Wilberforce, whom Frederick Douglas revered. So if a freed slave like Frederick Douglass can revere a white Englishman for taking a biblical stand against the slave trade, you do have to wonder how we could get to a point where we have to clarify that slavery was not invented by white people in 1619 in Jamestown. It's almost funny, but it's not. Well, the other interesting thing is that the claims in this New York Times Magazine 1619 project, which is infiltrating

all the schools, as you well know, it's being used as a text teaching guide, is the fact that Pennsylvania was the first government in history to abolish slavery. that the United States in 1808 was the first country to abolish the international slave trade. And that liberal historians at Princeton and elsewhere were so appalled at the misrepresentation of history in the 1619 project that they banded together to write a corrective letter to the New York Times magazine saying, you know, Hannah Jones, this is all wrong. It's against the basic facts of history and what actually took place and the fact that the United States set in train, the first nation ever to do so because it announced that all men are created equal, the forces that would lead to the eventual abolition of slavery. And in fact, in the first decade of the United States's existence between the time of the Declaration and in 1787, the Constitution, all the states north of the Mason-Dixon line, north of the Ohio River, abolished slavery. The Northwest ordinance passed by the Congress in 1787, abolished slavery in those territories. Jefferson tried to get a bill passed in the Commonwealth of Virginia to abolish slavery.

It just failed there. But nonetheless, that was the impetus that was, let's say, forestalled because of the cotton gin, which made slavery so profitable because of the export of cotton. Unfortunately, those southern slave states adhered to slavery. slavery, and it took eventually the enormous cost of more than 600,000 lives to abolish it in the civil war and the amendments passed afterwards. Did any white people die in the civil war fighting against slavery? I'm just curious.

Any white guys involved in that? Yeah, only about 400,000. Only 400,000 died. Again, it's almost funny to me that when you look at the most basic facts, you, you, you, look at something like the 1619 project in the New York Times, and you think this is such a level of dishonesty and deception that, frankly, it's hard not to be shocked by it. It's one thing to have differences of opinion.

But when they're promulgating what can only be described as an atheist-Marxist view of history, it's hard not to be a little bit shocked. It's hard not to be shocked that we have so many people in the academy and in teachers unions across America, that seem to have no ability to stand up against this, no cultural confidence. They are just saying what they think they need to say to go along.

And then, of course, my question sometimes rhetorical, sometimes not, is how is that any different from Germans just going along with the National Socialist Project to keep their jobs or whatever. So if some, you know, millions of Jews are murdered, I can't be bothered by that. I mean, I, we're going to go to a break. Folks, I'm talking to Robert R. Riley has a new book out or an expanded in addition. America on trial, a defense of the founding. Check it out. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And,

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They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Folks, I have the joy of speaking with Robert R. Riley, not to be confused with the other. Robert Riley's. This Robert Riley has written a book called America on trial, a defense of the founding with a forward by Larry Orne. Robert, what else is in this defense of the founding that we need to know that might surprise some folks tuning into the program right now? Well, you know, Eric, it tries to answer the question since I say that this thesis that the United

States was the product of the radical individualism of the Enlightenment, I asked the question, well, if that wasn't the source, what were the sources? But from where came the ideas that made the American founding possible? That leads to an extensive historical exploration of the origin of Jewish monotheism, of Greek philosophy, and of course at the heart of it and what made it possible was Christianity and all the changes that were engendered by it, in fact, the creation of a new civilization that produced what we have today. I don't think, you know, Alexis de Tocqueville makes clear. Some of the founders make clear. John Adams made clear that the principle of equality of all people, meaning everyone has the same,

God-given intrinsic human rights to life, liberty, etc., could not have spread and become so persuasive in men's mind if Christianity were not underlying it. Because even though the founders expressed it in a philosophic way, it was supported by revelation, and Christianity made its general acceptance possible. So I would say the American founding would be inconceivable without these influences. But it's interesting, isn't it, that we ought to know this. What you just said, I know to be true. I know it to be true. And there are various aspects of it. I mean, I wrote about it to some extent in my book, If You Can Keep It, which is the famous line that exiting the Constitutional Convention,

Benjamin Franklin is answering this woman, Mrs. Powell, in Philadelphia, when she says, what have you given us, Dr. Franklin, a monarchy or a republic? And he says, a republic, madam, if you can keep it. And I titled my book that because it underscores the idea that it is our own individual moral agency that undergirds freedom for all. If people just say, I'm going to do what I want to do for me, if I don't have virtue, If I don't understand these things, if I don't answer to a higher authority, government authority will increase. It's only because you have a population that answers to God, roughly speaking.

In other words, that there are enough people that get the idea that we're going to be good and do good and govern ourselves because we answer to God. And I argue in my book that it was the preaching of George Whitfield up and down the 13 colonies that really made it possible for enough people to get this memo, so to speak, to get this idea and to make it possible for these founders in 1776 and 1787 to say, let's try this. We think the American people can pull this off. I'm so glad you mentioned that, not only Whitfield, but the key word is virtue, because not only Franklin,

all the founders, they were unanimous in the view that because they chose a Republican form of government, virtue was the cornerstone, and its survival would depend on the virtue of the American people. What's more, as George Washington and the others said, including Franklin, the main force forming the virtue of the American people was religion. There's no way around it. This is what I find so funny. It's like you don't even have to agree with it, but historically speaking, there's no way around it. This is what they perceived.

This is why they decided to try this new thing, this self-government, this radical form of self-government. And we don't talk about this anymore. We act as though, well, those are some nice old ideas. But you know, and I know it's like math. One plus one equals two. It never becomes anything else. Like that's a given. And whatever math you're doing, if you don't get that, it falls apart.

what we're talking about virtue. This is at the foundation of everything. So how is it possible even to talk about American freedom and any of these things, unless you understand that virtue has to be a part of it? But can we even imagine public schools talking about virtue? We can't even imagine it. Well, I think precisely we're in trouble. And our society is disintegrated exactly to the extent that it has abandoned virtue.

and in fact, even worse, it is denied the distinction that allows us to talk about morality according to an objective standard. If that's gone, society does devolve into exactly what the critics of the founding said, radical individualism that is focused upon satisfying appetites at the expense of everything else. And so the profusion of drugs, of pornography, of materialism, of the dissolution of the family, we can go through the entire litany with which you're so familiar. It's all due to a lack of virtue. It's all due to the lie that there is no such thing as virtue, that there is, you know, we can't really have known Aristotle's book, The Ethics, in which he spells out according

to the best thinking of classical Greek what virtue is. When we come back, actually, I want to pick up this issue of virtue. This is at the heart of everything, folks. The book is America on trial. The hopes and fears of all the years are misborn of Mary and gathered. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big deal about, but I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain,

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La la la la la, la, is the season to be childish. Hey, folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Robert Riley. I believe that's Irish. He has written a book called America on trial, the defense of the founding. And we're at that part, Robert Riley, where we talk about virtue.

I was saying this. When I wrote my book that asked the, if you can keep it, the question that Franklin says, if you can keep it, I really, in the course of writing that book and in the course of my friendship with Oz Guinness, who has written a number of books that touch on this, I realize that this is really as basic as it gets. In other words, there is no way you can have freedom or can understand even what freedom is on the American model,

the founder's vision, unless you get the idea that at the heart of it, just without any other options are these concept of virtue, these concepts of virtue and faith, all of the founders understood this. And that's what is so astonishing. It wasn't just some Christian founders and the others were Enlightenment deists. No, no, no, no, no.

Every single one of the founders understood this. But you write about it in the book. This idea of virtue has vanished. We live in a sort of secular, you know, pseudo-culture. that pretends that we might have a wonderful country or a wonderful world with avoiding the very issue of virtue or whether there is such thing as virtue or right or wrong. Again, it's almost funny. You know, Eric, there's an afterword in the book where I asked the question, if it wasn't

the founder's fault, meaning the current state of decay in which we live, whose fault was it? And I can only suggest an answer to that question because it would require another book. And the suggestion is German historicism, which was imported into this country in the 19th century with German professors education, Americans going to Germany to get higher degrees, which taught by historicism, we mean moral relativism, that truth is only a product of its time, times change. We have different truths. There are no objective moral standards that exist at all times everywhere. Now, to the extent to which the United States or the people have adopted this belief,

it means that all people aren't created equal, that they don't have these God-given intrinsic rights at all times everywhere for everyone, because, well, that's just a product of its time. And we've moved on to the administrative state and we're creating a new form of human nature and so forth. You mentioned Eric earlier what happened in Nazi Germany. And I've dedicated a lot of time over the last year and a half studying this very issue because I'm fascinated by how the German people could have succumbed to the lies of Nazism and Adolf Hitler and gone along just in the way that you described. They went along to get along. And then there were those remarkable individuals who said, no, this is a lie.

I won't live by it. And I will do whatever is necessary to stand up against it, even at the cost of my own life. And you wrote a magnificent book about one of those extraordinary individuals, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And there were others whose diaries I have been reading because I want to know, Where came the source of strength to these extraordinary people against all the forces of their government, society, convention to stand up against it and to, as Bonhofer did, pay that ultimate price? And the answer comes through very clearly in terms of what you've already spoken of, faith and the belief in transcendent moral principle and the belief in God, to whom. we will all be accountable. And that gave them the courage to do what they did

in opposing this hideous lie. And we today are living under lies that are just as comprehensive about human existence, whether it's transgenderism, the LGBT agenda, the maligning of our founding. And you are one of the courageous people who refuses to be suborned by these lies and who repeatedly stands up against them.

Well, that's very kind of you. I think, you know, once you know what we know, you can't shut up, you can't be silent, you can't stay seated, because you realize, first of all, you know, if you're any kind of a Christian, you're supposed to believe that the God in whom we put our faith defeated death.

So if that's true, if that's not some metaphor, some thin metaphor, then what can I fear? What should I fear? I should only fear, God. I should only fear not doing his will. And so, of course, people who actually believe that are the greatest threat to Marxists, to people who want to control you and to take away your freedom. They can do that unless you believe in that God. And so to the extent that you were

sharing earlier, that American-style self-government depends on people of serious Christian faith. Serious Christian faith cannot be legislated. Once you try to say, okay, in order to have freedom, we need people of faith and we need virtue, so we're going to make virtue and faith, you know, the law. You can't do that because immediately the freedom evaporates. So that's the conundrum at the heart of the founding. But it is, you don't need to be a Christian. You can be a sociologist, you can be just a student of history, and you observe that this was the reality that the founders saw, and you mentioned it earlier, they said that without people of Christian faith, this is just not going to happen. You don't even need to believe Christian faith is true,

but you observe that it is those people who actually believe this stuff that live lives of virtue and make this possible. It's simply an historical reality, and that the atheist, Marxists, they're scared to death of it. They are, and we had a magnificent example of this in the Commonwealth of Virginia, when in Loudoun County, as the schools were trying to enforce the transgender ideology, a young man on the faculty refused to use a changed pronoun and call a her, a hymn. As a consequence of which he was suspended as a prelude to being fired. He simply couldn't do it according to his conscience. I believe he's an evangelical Christian. He had his Thomas Moore moment, and he passed with flying colors. And his courage is what

inspired this groundswell in Virginia that led in last November to the overturning of the the Democrats in this state leading to a Republican governor. That's exactly right. We've got one segment left. So hang on Robert Riley. I want to continue this line of thinking. This is exciting, folks, the books America on trial. I remember my dad talking about the movie Tora, Tora, Tora.

when after Pearl Harbor, they show the, I don't know who it is, somebody on a Japanese battleship saying, we have awakened a sleeping giant. In other words, sometimes when you attack, it backfires because you wake up a sleeping giant and he will come and crush you. That's what I believe is happening in places like Loudoun County, Virginia, is that the people with the, you know, the crazy people, people with these insane ideologies, they push too hard and they wake people up.

And that's exactly what happened in Virginia. People said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that you don't think parents should have a say in what their kids are taught? Like, seriously, you believe that? I'm glad you said that because now I know what you believe. And we will never let anybody like you be elected governor or senator or whatever. That's kind of what's happening in America.

things had to get this bad so that a lot of people will wake up to the madness because they're just trying to raise their kids and work at their jobs. They didn't know that this Marxist lunacy, this anti-American madness, this inhuman madness, was happening. You know, it's unsustainable, Eric, because reality continues to exist, no matter how thorough the denial of it is insisted upon. by the media, by higher education, by the elites. Reality is still there. So they have to be constantly on attack. Napoleon said, I must conquer to survive. He understood he was an illegitimate ruler, came to power by a coup d'etat.

So his legitimacy rested on his continuing conquering. He couldn't stop. Same thing with these lies about transgenderism, the LGBT. gender, they can exist only insofar as they continue to conquer, and they'll never succeed because reality continues to exist. So the lie won't succeed, and there you have a young man in his 20s who punctures it just with the courage to stand up and say the truth. So the more people who do that, I think it's encouraging because that then gives a focal point for the backlash. And like you, I believe there is a residual virtue in the United States and that people know the truth when they hear it as soon as someone has the courage to speak it and they will respond.

I mean, literally that is what I say everywhere I go, that there are enough people that know this, but maybe they're afraid to speak up or they're kind of hanging back. So when someone, whether it is you or me or this young man teaching in Loudoun County, whenever anybody stands for the truth or speaks to the truth, there are innumerable people watching and listening and they go, hey, wait a minute, that's true. And that person had the courage to say it or to live it out or to risk their job. That galvanizes me. Now I will have the courage. And so it's the antithesis of what happened in Germany in the 30s, what Chuck Holson referred to as,

the spiral of silence. The more people that hang back and are afraid to speak out, the more difficult it is for everyone else to speak out. But I believe, because God is sovereign and he has not chosen for this nation to go down that path at this time, he has allowed enough of us to know the truth and to speak the truth in America so that what is happening now is people are waking up and we are fighting. And by the grace of God, we will get through. this and the lies will be revealed and the enemy will be routed and people will live free. So we're living in exciting times, Robert Riley. I think we're out of time, but I just want to say that you're writing this book doing this expanded edition as part of that. People need to understand

what we're dealing with. The book is America on trial, the defense of the founding. Robert Riley is my guest. Robert Riley, just a joy to know you're out there. Thank you for doing what you do. Eric, thank you for what you have done and continue to do and for having me back on the program. I deeply appreciate it. My joy. Thank you.